1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasonic surgical apparatus for transmitting ultrasonic vibrations from an ultrasonic vibrator to a living body tissue through a probe.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a variety of apparatuses for outputting ultrasonic vibrations by using an ultrasonic converter have been in actual use. For example, a surgical ultrasonic knife and an ultrasonic processor are known.
Especially, a surgical ultrasonic knife has an ultrasonic vibrator stored in a case and a probe connecting to the ultrasonic vibrator. The surgical ultrasonic knife transmits ultrasonic vibrations from the ultrasonic vibrator to a living body tissue through the probe.
For such a conventional surgical ultrasonic knife, a variety of technologies relating to detection of water leaks into the case, for example, have been proposed. However, the same methods cannot be simply used for detecting abnormalities occurring in the probe.
In order to handle this problem, a conventional ultrasonic surgical apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-271140, for example, has a function for feeding weak current through a probe and monitoring the impedance in order to check the detection of an abnormality in the probe.